DEMO, 26 Mar 2016Oppo will earn huge profits, if the phone/per addition phone, there will be a small one. Will ... moreBBK Electronics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBK_Electronics) of China have a very strong marketing team that follow different strategies for their brands like Vivo, Oppo & OnePlus. With OnePlus they opt for invite only online sales channel which creates a lot of hype among online customers. This brand will always have limited models, are reasonably priced, and available worldwide. This marketing philosophy mimics that of Lenovo, LeEco & Xiaomi where you spend minimum budget on marketing expenses, bypass the middleman distributor/dealers profits, and save huge amounts of money with no investments in offline sales channel infrastructure. Thus OnePlus phones are generally available at a stellar price for its specs where the end customers are truly benefited. OnePlus may not make a huge profit per unit but thrives on huge volume sales. A sales target they failed to achieve with OnePlus2 as Lenovo, LeEco & Xiaomi pumped out even better models at even lower price. In India for example Lenovo Vibe X3 ate all the market share of OnelPlus 2, so they immediately dropped the price by INR 2000 to counter this.

BBK's other two brands follow offline sales channel just like Samsung, LG, Apple & HTC. Be it Vivo or Oppo, they launch each mid-end/flagship models with a big bang spending big bucks on lavish release day events & parties. They rope in some of the best celebrities of the country by paying huge cash (for marketing reasons) to grab attention of media with front page news. Then they sponsor some of the biggest events happening in the country. Like in India, this year Vivo is the title sponsor of Indian Premier League (IPL) while Oppo is doing the same for ICC WT20. As cricket is the most happening sport in our country it only makes sense for them to invest huge amounts of money (Vivo invested roughly INR 100 crore or US $15 million in IPL) to create the country wide hype & buzz in consumer's minds. But there is a method to all this madness.

All this titanic amounts of marketing expenditure made by Vivo or Oppo does needs to get refunded with additional profits to BBK as no one is here for charity. How to do that? One way is to make a smartphone with low-cost and subpar specs and sell it at three to four times inflated cost to garner huge profit margins, thus sucking end consumer pockets dry. But online consumers having access to internet will pretty quickly find out Xiaomi is selling much better spec smartphones at less than half the price of a competitor Vivo/Oppo model. So Vivo and Oppo will immediately turn out to be the laughing stock of online sales and nobody will buy their unjustified high priced phones. So Oppo & Vivo opt for offline sales channel through distributors & dealers, again spending a huge amount of money to erect this infrastructure. Like in their homeland China they mainly target Tier2 & Tieir 3 cities of India where internet access is much less and end consumers have very little or no knowledge of what is happening in the mobile industry. These consumers immediately become their target prey as Vivo & Oppo trains a lot of sales reps to brainwash them. The outcome is they are able to sell their smartphones at two times the price of a similar spec phone available online, thus garnering huge profit margins and recovering all their marketing expenditure from the hard earned money of end customers.

This kind of marketing strategy is nothing unusual as it were followed by Samsung & LG five years back in India when they had to make their name. Now Samsung & LG are so popular in our country they do not have to spend big bucks in marketing like Vivo/Oppo, but still are able to sell their phones at a very high price. Unfortunately even by pricing Vivo or Oppo phones in the same level of Samsung/ LG they are unable to provide the after sales service that top tier manufacturers do. Say LG & Samsung flagships will receive timely android version upgrades, where as for Vivo there are zero updates. The moral of this story is, a sane buyer should never get sucked into the hype and buzz created by smarphone makers. Better compare specs and neutral reviews (as found in gsmarena.com) from different brands before committing for a buy. For me being an online consumer, Vivo or Oppo will always be the laughing stock until they stop their unjustified high pricing strategy to loot the end customers.

Nishru, 26 Mar 2016I know most of the phones (and electronics) are made in southern Asia (China, Vietnam, Taiwan)... morewho said because they were made in china that makes them chinese companies? I just pointing out that china (what u called land of cheap knockoffs) are the central location where almost all the electronics were made, and now majority of MOBILE companies are from china. Far years back before android or iphone exist, HTC for example is one of recognized brands of smartphone, while Samsung phones still not get any attention from western nor european, and HTC is a founding member of Open Handset Alliance. In 2011 HTC is the third most highly valued smartphone-maker in the world behind apple and samsung, so HTC in the past (maybe until now) were a contender to apple and samsung.

Anonymous, 26 Mar 2016it is clear that you have no idea what are you talking about. First, if you know the list of t... moreI know most of the phones (and electronics) are made in southern Asia (China, Vietnam, Taiwan), but that's not where their HQs are. Just because they are made in China, doesn't make them Chinese companies, and being that, they've had a higher quality standard, then native brands from that country. Non of the brands I've mentioned are new one's, but few years back, they weren't really a contenders to Samsung or Apple, not many people even knew much about them. Now they are, and in upcoming years they will get even stronger support (providing they will keep it up). HTC is the example here, they've been doing it for a bit longer than the others. One M8 was named by many "the best phone of it's generation". And now there's more to choose from if you want a "flagship experience".

Assefa, 26 Mar 2016*scratches head* "very soon huawei" hasnt huawei taken the top spot from xiaomi in china... so... moreNot sure about Chinese market, but Huawei was at the 3rd place worldwide for most of the 2015. Apparently Xiaomi took it back in the last months of 2015. For now Samsung and Apple are solid on first 2 spots, but their growth weakened compared to last years. Looks like people get enough of their insane pricing. So it may be possible, that in a few years the tables will turn. But that remains to be seen.

Nishru, 26 Mar 2016Chinese mobile market will hit it hard this year. And in a year or two the "top dogs" will hav... moreit is clear that you have no idea what are you talking about. First, if you know the list of top 10 mobile company, the majority companies are from China. HTC and Huawei are not new players. The fact is the land of cheap knockoffs you said before are actually the central place where almost all the electronics in the world were made, even iphones are made in china, and samsung are made in vietnam but some of their spare parts are from the land of cheap knockoffs..

Nishru, 26 Mar 2016Chinese mobile market will hit it hard this year. And in a year or two the "top dogs" will hav... more*scratches head* "very soon huawei" hasnt huawei taken the top spot from xiaomi in china... so im not sure why you say very soon not to mention the nexus 6p and they are #3 top smartphones seller on the planet currently, HTC was up "there" once but they have fallen greatly over the past couple years and with their mid and low price offerings being so bad i doubt they will follow anytime soon, china will takeover for sure though

Nishru, 26 Mar 2016Chinese mobile market will hit it hard this year. And in a year or two the "top dogs" will hav... moreHuawei is the third biggets manufacturer and their growth is faster than Apples and Samsungs

Oppo will earn huge profits, if the phone/per addition phone, there will be a small one. Will gain tremendously, through many phones sold.Buyers market of cell phones, ask such a product at a price acceptable to most .Phones are advanced configurations, P9, so only the price will dictate sales.